1. Field of the Invention
Preferred embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a document management system, and more particularly, to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a computer program product for automatically identifying a language used in document data and translating a property value of the document data from a language of the property value into a language of the document data.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In a document management system for managing document data, metadata representing a characteristic of document data or information on document data is managed as a property of the document data. For example, as shown in FIG. 8, a document management system manages properties 31 and 32 of a document 30.
As shown in FIG. 8, the properties 31 and 32 include a key and a value. In such a property, a key includes information on a document file such as “date of generation,” “author,” “title,” and so forth. A value includes a variety of information on a corresponding key such as a character string of a specific date, an array of character strings of names, a character string with additional information of a language, and so forth. In general, a user of a document file is accustomed to use a language used in the document file. Therefore, when a language used in a property of the document file is same as the language used in the document file, usability of a document management system may be improved.
For example, a known technique has been proposed for providing a document management system by transferring information included in a document file to another source or environment. In the document management system, each time a document file is subjected to any processing, information on the processing can be stored in the document file.
However, such a technique has a drawback in that a function to automatically identify a language used in a document file or translate a language used in a property of the document file into the language used in the document file is not included. According to the technique, when desiring to store a property of a document file in a same language as the document file, a user must undertake cumbersome procedures such as changing a language setting of each document file after examining the language of the document file, changing language settings of a group of document files written in an identical language picked up by the user, or the like. Such cumbersome procedures decrease usability of the document management system.